The User Experiences Of The Future 230
Patrick Griffin writes "The way that we interact with technology is almost as important as what that technology does. Productivity has been improved greatly over the years as we've adapted ourselves and our tools to technological tasks. Just the same, the UI experience of most hardware and software often leaves novice users out in the cold. The site 'Smashing Magazine' has put together a presentation of 'some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques seem very futuristic, and are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they might become ubiquitous over the next years.'"
Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Most Notable Difference... (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll be able to squeeze in a trip to Starbucks between reboots. And this in the early morning, rush hour traffic.
Seriously, the most problematic part about today's user experience is that the majority of the computers run Windows, and more slowly than they did 20 years ago. Sure, you get nice, pretty graphics, but when you're actually trying to get work done, you'd rather have a responsive machine.
Changes will be evolutionary, not revolutionary (Score:4, Insightful)
As an example of a well-engineered UI that can make otherwise extremely tedious tasks manageable: Google's Picasa photo manager. It manages to deal with huge amounts of data (3700x2600 jpg's or whatever 10MP comes out to, and 24MB RAW files), run quickly, and show you relevant stuff.
The 3D rotating super+tab screen for task switching in Compiz is another example of using extra computing power to show something useful.
Opera's introduction of mouse gestures is another good idea.
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a Zen thing, you just wouldn't understand.
The experience is in the details (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the most common feelings provoked by today's interfaces are anger and frustration. That's because the interface is littered with rough/unpolished edges, and because software is designed as a bag full of (unrelated) features - instead of as a mean to achieve an end - the process to actually use a feature is rarely taken into the design, not to say tested with users to test it and debug it with the user using it.
A really good development in user experience would be a way to force programmers to follow
this kind of advice [joelonsoftware.com].
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:3, Insightful)
I offer as evidance the spring and plastic ball models of modules, and the skelitons in the doctors offices.
2D clearly has its place, but I expect 3D to start elbowing in on it as soon as the display\interaction and computational difficults are met.
Re:The greatest UI was the fax machine (Score:5, Insightful)
When you approach a fax machine, there is no obvious starting action to take. Do you dial first, or scan the pages first? Do you scan the pages one at a time, or can you put them down all at once? When you dial the number, there is no feedback that anything is happening. No sound of dialing, no sound of handshake. Just some cryptic messages like TX that mean absolutely nothing to a novice. Eventually the machine will spit out a page that, you hope, says somewhere on it STATUS: SUCCESS. If you do run into difficulty, you have to find the dead-tree manual to help you, because the messages on the little LCD display don't help much.
A fax machine's UI is about as user friendly as a linux shell without man pages.
User experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want a user experience. If I'm having a "user experience", then the application or operating system is getting in my way. I want the OS or app to melt into the background so I hardly think that I'm using it.
Re:Productivity improved? (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, I can sit down on my computer, grab dozens of scientific articles in a few minutes, write a summary of them, and have it typeset to publication-quality with a few clicks. I can then launch a professional-quality graphics art program to make a few figures. I then put it all together and send it to someone (who gets it within seconds).
The same operation would previously have taken much more time and money, not to mention specialist talent. (E.g. numerous trips to library, typing and re-typing a manuscript, hiring a graphic artist to make a figure, and mailing the finished product would have taken weeks of time, hundreds of dollars, etc.) And I haven't even mentioned things that are inherently compute-bound (e.g. how long would it take to run a complicated simulation today vs. ten years ago?).
In short, these technologies have enabled the individual to do things that previously only specialists could do, and have allowed everyone to complete their work faster than before. It's easy to dismiss this since the promised "additional free time" from increased productivity never materializes: instead we merely increase our standards of quantity and quality. Many people don't even see this as progress (e.g. many people would prefer handing off tasks like typing and typesetting to others, whereas nowadays the norm is for everyone to do this themselves).
Nevertheless, the net amount of "stuff" that a person produces (documents, designs, computations, admin tasks completed, etc.) has indeed increased in breadth, quantity and quality, due to the use of computers, networks, and our modern clever user-interfaces.
I, for one, am much more productive using a computer than I would be otherwise. And if anyone thinks that their computer isn't making them more productive, then I challenge them to try to complete daily tasks without it, and see how long/arduous things actually are without.
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:5, Insightful)
This 'one size fits all' mentality is the issue. We need interfaces that scale from basic to advanced so the basic users doing get slammed with all the advanced stuff and advanced users don't find themselves without the tools they need to actually do their work.
Ick. Glam substitutes for usability (Score:3, Insightful)
...well, maybe I'm just crotchety because the DVD player just broke, only weeks after I finally got out most of the remote's cryptic functions learned. (The button with the diamond does this, and the button with the square plus a straight line does that, and the circle with a line through it does this... is anybody else disconcerted that, after two thousand years of refining the phonetic alphabet, in less than one generation we seem to have gone back to hieroglyphics?)
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:3, Insightful)
From where did you get that? Our movement is for most part pretty much limited to 2D (forward,backward,left,right are good, but up and down are heavily restricted), the earth is flat (at least from a human point of view) and there really isn't all that much true 3D in our daily lives. Sometimes we stuck a bunch of 2D things into a hierarchical structure, but thats as 3D as it ever gets. Our eyes of course also only see 2D view of the world, sure a little depth mixed in, but nothing close to full 3D.
If we would be build for 3D we wouldn't get dizzy when playing Descent, but quite frankly, most do.
There is of course also that little problem with interfaces: A bunch of papers spread before me allows me to easily grab exactly what I want with a single click, picking the right piece of paper from a stack is much harder, since I simply can't see what is in the stack. I only see a 2D projection of the stack and even a 3D display wouldn't change that.
That said, a little 3D does have its place, you do want have the ability to zoom-out, maybe add a little depth to see which Window is on top and such. But having to search for a Window that is hidden behind a stable of other Windows just isn't fun, but thats exactly what you get with 3D.
The best UI is the one you can't see (Score:5, Insightful)
In practice anything that involves waving your arms around, a la Minority report will be the fastest way to get tired arms ever invented. So that's the Reactible, Multi-touch and Microsoft surface out of the running. Imaging doing that for an 8 hour shift in your datacentre. Completely impractical, but like flying cars, looks great to the uninformed.
Let's face it, typing is quicker than mousing - you've got 110 keys at your disposal instead of just 2 (or up to 5 - wow wee!!!) and the limitation is the number you can press is limited by the numberof fingers you can manipulate at once - not the numebr of things you can press. Just try writing a letter by mouse clicks. Typing is even quicker than speaking - especially when you have to go back and change the phonetically (sorry fonetically) spelled words that come out.
Personally, all I want from a UI is one that doesn't steal focus from my window to pop-up a "Shall I delete all your files Y / n" just when I think I'm, going to hit in a text window. It should keep the clutter off my screen and just show me the stuff I want. Aeroglass is nowhere near this (and probably going in the wrong direction anyway - far too complicated). Let's just keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Re:The best UI is the one you can't see (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:1, Insightful)
>that scale from basic to advanced so the basic users doing get
>slammed with all the advanced stuff and advanced users don't find
>themselves without the tools they need to actually do their work.
So very true - so - where is this graphical thing merging the command line interface with some some buttons, side pane and scroll down list? I must admit, even I would sometimes use it.CTRL-R is nice, but a limitless graphical history with some learning capability as to the programs and my purpose would be great.
Of course, being a command line veteran - most of my screen area would probably be a terminal anyhow.
Re:The best UI is the one you can't see (Score:3, Insightful)
The LCARS interface, designed by Michael Okuda for TNG, is really a vision of what I would like to see. A large touch area that dynamically updates (intelligently - eg, the way I specify) its touch areas based on state. The keyboard in front of me takes most input, but I can touch specific areas on the screen for more esoteric actions - buttons, tabs, anything I'd normally "click" on. I can move my finger much faster and more precisely than my mouse, and I can type faster on a regularly sized keyboard than I can write, or text. So, take what works well (my hand) and put it closer to what I work with (the image). Multi-touch then becomes very useful, but not so ueber-expressive, a la "surface" or the others.
The only issue I have with LCARS as seen on-screen is the use of numbers instead of icons or text to convey information (but that's a trivial issue).
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:2, Insightful)
Well...
Re:Most Notable Difference... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was just thinking along those lines the other day, as I was waiting for a Facebook page to load. I made a few personal websites back in the early days of HTML, and my philosophy was that if my page took longer than 5 seconds to load, the viewer would hit 'Back' and go somewhere else. Nowadays I always browse in multiple tabs so I don't have to sit idle while each page loads--which can take close to a minute.
I don't know what the user experience of the future will be like, but I guarantee it will involve many progress bars.*
*Probably the most ironically named item since Microsoft Works.
Re:Not sure 3D is always the best (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously though, our brains are evolved for more than moving pseudo-2D object (your account of us) around your equally pseudo-2D world. We don't live in flatland.
Our brains know how to deal with objects we handle with our uniquely agile hands, this not only happens in 3D but also uses all degrees of freedom just like descent does. Where your descent argument has merit is that our heads do not handle all degrees of freedom well. That's true and a 3D model for a GUI must take this into account.
Regarding moving our heads around in all degree of freedom I would like to put you on notice that I was killer at descent and never once to my memory suffered dizziness. I would remind you that not long ago the brains of our forefathers were swinging around trees in all their 3D glory. I submit some of us may well be closer to these relatives than others.